Event Details

SCC Hybrid Seminar

Speaker: Dr Marie Farrell

Title: Strong Software Reliability for Autonomous Space Robotics

Date: 31st March

Time: 2:00pm - 3:00pm

Join: In Person CHC - Charles Carter B34 or via Teams

Abstract:

This talk will provide a high-level overview of my current research as part of my Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowship (started in October 2022).

The harsh environment, distances involved and communication issues surrounding space exploration make it both necessary and difficult to deploy autonomous robotic systems for these missions. However, to ensure the success of such expensive and mission-critical systems we need a fundamental step change in the way that these systems are verified and assessed. Formal methods, combined with testing and simulation-based approaches to verification, all play a role in analysing the robustness of these systems. But each of these techniques cannot be used effectively unless the requirements of the system are clearly and unambiguously defined. In fact, requirements specification for autonomous systems is an especially difficult part of the development process. This talk will provide an overview of my recent work on examining requirements for software that learns. Though difficult, once the requirements are specified, complex robotic systems typically benefit from a heterogeneous and integrated approach to verification, and I will provide some examples of this.

Bio:

Marie Farrell is a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellow in the Autonomy and Verification group at The University of Manchester. Her research aims to devise new ways of describing, analysing and assuring the autonomous behaviour of robotic space systems. She previously held a Senior Post-Doctoral Researcher position at Maynooth University in Ireland on the EU-funded VALU3S project, where she worked on formalising and verifying requirements for an aircraft engine software controller. Before that, she worked on the EPSRC funded FAIR-SPACE Hub where she explored using and combining formal methods to reason about and provide certification evidence for robotic systems that are to be deployed in hazardous environments. She received her PhD from Maynooth University in 2017 for her work on defining a semantics, modularisation constructs and interoperability for the Event-B formal specification language using the theory of institutions. She is Secretary of the working group developing the IEEE P7009 Standard on Fail-Safe Design of Autonomous and Semi-Autonomous Systems. She is co-chair of the IEEE International Conference on Space Mission Challenges for Information Technology (SMC-IT) 2023.